If You Get a Protective Order Placed on You, You Cannot Call
Video Transcribed: She called me. Hi, my name is Ryan Cannonie. I’m a Tahlequah criminal defense lawyer. Today we’re going to talk about protective orders and what they do and don’t cover. The number one thing I am told with protective orders when people come in and the number one thing I tell people when they come to me to ask about them is that look, protective orders are a one-way street. If you get a protective order placed on you, you cannot call. You cannot show up.
You cannot try to have contact with that person. You can’t have third-party contact, meaning that you can’t have your brothers, cousins, friends, roommates also goes talk to that person. That’s all going to end up with a violation of protective order on you. And if you do it enough or enough times in a row there, you can end up with felony stalking. So you have a pretty cost-benefit on you. It’s pretty high to stay away from that person.
Now, what if they contact you? This comes up a lot. Now, it helps in any hearing when they’re contacting you because it shows that they’re not really that afraid of you, or they don’t have as many concerns, but the truth is it does not invalidate the protective order. Someone can contact you, go to court, and still, you could have a protective order found against you.
If they’re contacting you and you reach out and try to contact them, they can still go make a police report and get you charged with violation of protective order. Now, does this make a lot of sense? No, I’m not going to say it does, but it’s the way our system is.
Now if someone’s constantly contacting you, what can you do? Well, first off, all you can do is say, and I wouldn’t even say anything to them, but if it’s in person, let’s say like texts and stuff, I wouldn’t respond. Just don’t respond. But if you’re talking about like in person, you can just be like, “Can’t talk to you.
Talk to the hand. I can’t talk to you until this is taken care of. Talk to my attorney.” Like, you do not want to have any contact with him. Not any of you, are trying to have a contact there. You got to cut that off because what happens in 80% of these and that’s a made-up statistic, but it happens all the time.
And as a prosecutor, I saw this all the time. And as a defense attorney, I see it all the time. And all my friends who have been prosecutors and defense attorneys, even decades beyond me, see it all the time, is that there’s a protective order.
People may try to reconcile at some point, or maybe they just fall back into old patterns, start talking, but the protective order’s never dismissed. And then something happens and they have a fight. They have an argument. Someone looks at another person and the person with the protective order doesn’t like that, whatever, the reason that comes up, and then all of a sudden, they’re back hot and heavy on wanting this protective order prosecuted against you.
And they have all these texts where you’ve been messaging them now. And it’s not just where they message you and you messaged back, or they walked up and talked to you and you talked back. It’s where you thought it was okay to reach out to them. And now you have a violation of protective order case criminally, as well as a PO hearing. So don’t fall into this trap. If you’ve already fallen into this trap, or if you have more questions about protective orders, then please reach out to us, give us a call, go to tahlequahattorney.com.
Let us know, we’ll try to help however we can. But just the big thing about protective orders that everyone almost across the board gets wrong, is it’s not a, “Well, they contacted me, so it’s dismissed.” It’s not dismissed until the judge says it’s dismissed. And as long as it is in place, it is in effect. You can’t have contact with them. And if you do, they can get you for a violation of protective order.
